It is an ongoing challenge to enhance the safety of vehicles with regard to minimizing the potential for injuries of occupants upon a collision event. A typical solution is to increase the metal girth or structure surrounding the passenger compartment. However, increasing the metal structure necessarily increases the weight, and therefore is detrimental when optimizing fuel efficiency.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA) presides over several federal regulations that have been promulgated in the interest of passenger safety. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 214 (FMVSS 214) is particularly concerned with side pole impact protection requirements and mandates certain requirements for passenger safety in the event of a side collision with a pole or other stationary object.
Unitary frame/body assemblies inherently exhibit greater protection due to their design. When considering side pole impacts, body-on-frame vehicles, typically used in commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks, and also when employing tow packages in pick-up trucks for example, may not have the inherent strength of a monolithic unitary frame/body vehicle. As such, the body-on-frame structural integrity must be enhanced. Satisfying the requirements of FMVSS-214 when utilizing a body-on-frame vehicle therefore presents special challenges.
Accordingly, it would be an improvement to provide a relatively-low weight solution for strengthening body-on-frame vehicles in the event of a side pole impact or collision, thereby reconciling the need for enhanced occupant protection in the event of side pole impact with the need for optimum fuel efficiency.